Arcade Hits Pack: Gunblade NY & LA Machineguns

Arcade Hits Pack: Gunblade NY & LA Machineguns
Developers: Sega, Sega AM3 (original games) Publisher: Sega Platform: Wii Released in US: August 26, 2010 Released in EU: August 27, 2010 Released in AU: August 30, 2010 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused cinematics. This game has revisional differences.

Putting aside the unwieldy title and creative use of the word "hit", Arcade Hits Pack: Gunblade NY & LA Machineguns is an enjoyable compilation of two arcade light gun shooters for the Wii.

Main Menu and Shared Files

The following files are either found among the menu directories or don't pertain to either game specifically.

Placeholder Graphics

These two unused images, color_bar.dds and logo_title.dds, are stored in /main/sprite along with the rest of the graphics for the intro, warning and title screen graphics.

Unused Attract Mode Video

This video, included with the "Sega" logo videos in /movie, appears to be an unused attract mode video for Gunblade NY. Its filename, GB_ADV_HD_4M.sfd, misleadingly suggests that it is in high definition but the same usage elsewhere shows the developers using "SD" and "HD" simply to mean "full-screen 4:3" and "widescreen 16:9", respectively.

File Exclusion Scripts

Throughout the game's files are a number of text files, tag_config.txt, which appear to have been used by some build tool to leave certain files out of the disc image when building, some of which heavily imply that a PC release of the compilation was also planned. Each of these files are identical except for the final line, so only the first example will be included here in full. The first line is a comment explaining that extensions should be comma separated and that these files will not be used.

/movie/winDx

#　無視するファイルの拡張子を登録していきます、区切りに[,]を使用して追加してください（＊は使えません）
[IGNORE_FILES]
extention = .fxo,.fx,.bat

/wiiMenu

extention = .csv,.tga,.sctpl

In /wiiMenuSound/pc, /vm2/sound/PC (Gunblade NY) and /LA/Sound/PC (Machineguns LA) are identical tag_config.txt files which appear to have been used to exclude the Wii audio assets from the PC build.

extention = .cpk,.csb

/vm2/PC

extention = .bin

Gunblade NY

To do: More revisional differences such as the police attack in Midtown and the explosion on UN Building. Plus, area name changes.

Twin Towers

Arcade	Wii

For the time, Gunblade NY featured a relatively-accurate New York in which the action took place, including the presence of the World Trade Center towers. For the Wii release, the towers were removed due to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks which felled them.

(Note that the color issues in the arcade screenshot are the result of Sega's internally incomplete emulation of the Model 2 hardware, not a change in art style.)

Updated Billboards

To do: Rip the old billboards from the original game.

Arcade	JVC	Coca-Cola	CSK	Olympus	Fujifilm	Maxell
Wii

In the updated Wii game, the prominent billboards for real/external products and companies at Times Square were replaced with fake or Sega-owned properties like Sonic and the Black Knight (which makes for an amusing case, since Gunblade takes place in 2005, four years prior to Black Knight's release), although some of them retain elements of the originals.

LA Machineguns

To do: Much like Gunblade NY, the Coca-Cola building and a Magical Truck Adventure advert on the jumbo screen were replaced by a generic Sega store and an advert for Gunblade NY on the Las Vegas stage. Since Supermodel Emulator now supports texture ripping, feel free to rip these textures here.

Internal Name

Several of the file archives within the LA Machineguns portion of the disc begin with headers indicating their purpose, e.g. Gunblade2 _ Collision Bank, Gunblade2 _ Other Data Bank and Gunblade2 _ Scroll Bank, among others. This is only of particular interest because the game is not otherwise referred to as Gunblade 2 (though the arcade version's startup screen does say "GB2"); rather, it is subtitled Rage of the Machines.

PC Textures

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Can these textures be viewed and are they in fact higher quality?

Alongside the (used) Wii textures in /LA/vrom_tex are versions labelled for use in the PC version, tex_pc_0.bin through tex_pc_7.bin. These files are roughly double the size of their tex_wii counterparts, though whether to provide higher fidelity or simply as a result of lesser compression is not yet known.